Honey Drizzled Grilled Peaches with Mascarpone

Grilled peaches, filled with slightly sweetened Mascarpone cheese, drizzled with a bit of honey, topped with either almonds or lavender. The choice is yours, because here are both recipes!

Grilled Peaches with honey, almonds and mascarpone cheese

I’ve often wished I could follow the bees in my garden…back to where ever it is they make their honey. My front yard is filled with lavender, Provencal and Hidcote, and as often as I work in my bee-filled garden, I’ve never been stung. I used to just watch them go from bud to bud, wondering how they could collect nectar from lavender…and then I became obsessed with lavender honey. I really wanted to taste it…it had to exist, right? What a great surprise it was, when a friend gave me lavender honey one day. Beautiful, subtly scented, lavender honey. My peaches have all ripened, we actually got to eat most of them this year since we covered our trees and berry vines with netting. In the past, the squirrels would hop on the back wall, steal a peach or two and tease Annabelle by running back and forth on the wall. You could almost hear them saying “Nah, nah!” as they thumbed their paws in their ears and tossed the half eaten peaches on the ground. I first tasted grilled peaches last summer, on a beach in Evanston, Illinois, while I was visiting my cousin.

Why had I never eaten grilled peaches before? And why did it take me a whole year to make them at home? I seem to favor fruit desserts, probably because they are not overly sweet. A grilled peach, filled with slightly sweetened Mascarpone cheese, drizzled with a bit of honey, served with a dessert wine. Yes, sir, that fits the bill for me. The dilemma? What to flavor the Mascarpone with…honey was a given. Lavender or almonds? Why not both? I made both versions for a dinner party, and the eight of us were pretty divided, with the grown-ups favoring the honey-lavender version and everyone loving the honey-almond version.

1tablespoondried lavender.If you are using lavender from your garden, please make sure it's free of pesticides. Otherwise you can purchase culinary lavender at most cooking stores as well as Cost Plus.